


primum non noncere

by redcigar



Category: Dishonored (Video Games), Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Crossover, Gen, M/M, One Shot, Pre-Slash, Romance, courting, will have you really never heard of stranger danger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-27
Updated: 2016-08-27
Packaged: 2018-08-11 08:46:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7884499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redcigar/pseuds/redcigar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A conversation. Two strangers meet on an even stranger night. (Or: Lady Boyle's Last Party, Hannibal remix edition).</p>
            </blockquote>





	primum non noncere

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kess/gifts).



There’s something to be said for the _hors d’oeurves_ , at least.

 

Will has withstood elbow-brushing, group-charming schmoozing of the worst order in the entrance hall, has withstood Beverley’s iron grip on his elbow rooting him to the spot while they were checked off the guest list. She’d brushed a curl behind his ear, adjusted his mask, and hissed “leave me and I slip some of Sokolov’s _special_ brew in your tea next chance I get.” Will had put his name down next to hers under M. White and wisely stayed put. Now he stands cloistered by the piano forte watching guests mill through the foyer in various states of drunkenness and wonders how quickly Beverley will grow bored of the fun and let him leave. Not like that’s likely – Beverley has found a friend in Lords Price and Zeller and together the three of them are determined to win the Boyle’s little identity game.

 

But the little biscuits with crayfish and sauce – those are good.

 

Not that the food should be trusted, by any means. Dunwall is not nearly on the up-and-up as the Boyle’s would like their guests to believe, and Will is halfway certain the shark on the buffet table is mostly stuffed with rodent meat, for show. No question where they got it from – Will’s caught glimpses of a pink tail here and there, and the maids’ shoes have blood on the heel. The Overseers are hoping nobody notices but of course, Will notices. It’s a night for details after all. Boyle Manor may infused with finery, lush with purple and gold, tables groaning under the weight of food and drink, halls booming with the forced power of laughter and revelry. But the drapes are moth-bitten. The jelly congealed. Beverley is here under false pretences and Will, by extension, is too. The back of his hand burns like fire. There is Sokolov’s elixir in every glass of port and the Overseer with his music box at the door. Details are what will tell the Boyle sisters apart.  Details are the name of the game.

 

“Details,” Will mutters, and watches Beverley link her arm with Price’s and drag him across towards the library, where one of the Boyle sisters is loitering by the fireplace and pretending she can’t see her guests slipping statuettes in their pockets.

 

“I would ask what your thoughts on the party are, but they seem to be written on your face.” Says a voice from the doorway. Will takes a moment to mourn his corner of solace, and turns to face the intruder. He’s a tall man, in a suit of blood red and a gold damask tie. His mask is matte black, with human features and two, twisted racks of horns, like a stag. And on that subject –

 

“I’m wearing a mask,” replies Will flatly, hugging his biscuits close to his chest and undoubtedly getting crumbs on the waistcoat Beverley borrowed for him from the academy. He was never much for receiving invitations, before. (Before water, and rats, and a low voice in the night). It’s only a half-mask, and does not cover the soft line of his jaw and mouth, which he’s simultaneously grateful for so that he can down glasses of port at a time, and churlish about because Beverley made him shave.

 

“You are indeed,” agrees his new companion, in a voice coloured with rolling accent, before taking a neat, purposeful step forward. “And a formidable mongoose you make. Hannibal Lecter, Count, at your service.”

 

“Will Graham, drinking, at yours,” Will replies gruffly, and raises the glass in question, “but I’m here with company, so…”

 

“Ah yes, the lovely Miss Katz. I made her acquaintance at the buffet table where she was much endeavouring to extract Sokolov’s elixir from the decanter using only a kit from her purse.”

 

“Well, she’s a student.” Will says, after an uncomfortable pause.

 

Most pauses with Will are uncomfortable. He’s learnt to live with that.

 

“Does that make you a teacher?” The Count – Hannibal – has stepped closer, Will notices with some discomfort. His suit gleams beside the polished piano forte, it looks as though he is ready to sit down and play at any moment. Some more guests spill into the room after him, in a cloud of perfume and enraged muttering about some upset in the yard outside – a duel, of some kind, gone wrong. A typical sort of fanfare for these sort of events. Will finds his attention diverted and when he glances back at his companion, Hannibal has moved closer yet again. His mask smothers all evidence of emotion, or intent, but Will feels that behind the smooth blackness of his disguise the man’s gaze is appraising – penetrating, even.

 

“No.” He says, firmly. “I’m unemployed. Currently. If you’ll excuse me—”

 

“You were saying something about details, when I entered the room. A personal reverie, of course, but it peaks my interest. To what were you referring?”

 

He is not physically touching Will’s arm but Will feels restrained. A lingering force, in the set of Hannibal’s shoulders, the line of his arm, which cradles a glass of his own in a manner that is almost an afterthought. Some entrepreneur has laughingly fallen into seat before the piano forte and is banging on the keys to the drunken encouragement of his friends.

 

“Details,” Will admits, setting his teeth, “like the fact you hate this player – your fingers twitched against that glass just now.”

 

“A simple observation,” Hannibal replies flippantly, “he is drunk, and a buffoon. He would have much better luck eating the instrument than playing it. Are you watching my fingers?”

 

Will is suddenly glad he is wearing a mask.

 

“Lydia is in the white, Esma the black, and Waverley the red. There. Details. Go collect your reward. Excuse me, I need another drink—”

 

“Well of course, I should have thought that were obvious. Lydia has a limp – for whatever reasons, it is best not to presume – and Waverley a slight lisp. Generations of inbreeding might do that, I imagine. If we take these facts into accord and account for the process of elimination, Esma’s costume should be obvious.”

 

Hannibal pauses, in a self-congratulatory sort of way, and Will finds himself hesitating yet again.

 

“But of course, I imagine you solved that particular puzzle very early in the evening. So of course, I ask again,” Hannibal tips his head curiously, and the point of one horn nearly grazes Will’s mask, “the details.”

 

Will glances over his shoulder. He’s started to sweat, which he’s half ashamed, half angry about. He’s been living in a constant state of anxiety for the past few months, since the Empress’s assassination. But it’s not the weepers that haunt him, or the rivers of rats squealing fat-bellied in his dreams. These are the everyday fears of those tapped behind the cold stone walls of Dunwall, water flooded to their ankles and rising every day.

 

Will’s hand itches.

 

“We have an unexpected guest,” he says, finally, after several minutes of silence. His shoulders are hunched defensively – he forces himself to relax.

 

He thinks Hannibal is smiling.

 

“A most astute observation,” he says primly, “and yet – your earlier point is not incorrect. Our burgeoning musician is doing more harm than good, I fear. Shall we move to one of the parlours?”  


Beverley is nowhere to be seen, and Will’s hand is itching. A small voice in his head that he often tries to ignore hisses _watch this watch this watch this—_

“Sure.” Will knocks back the rest of his drink. It burns on the way down, the chemical aftertaste the only evidence of the elixir watered in through the brew. “Lead the way.”

 

They move through the room to the foyer, where Will stoops under the fall of a velvet drape and Hannibal does not. Hannibal seems like the man to which the world stoops, and not the other way around. Will keeps that particular observation to himself. In the back of the manor several parlours lie interconnected, packed with bookshelves, which Will approves of, and yet more guests, which Will does not. But their voices are lowered, and the conversations not as drunken as their compatriots near the banquet hall. A quantity of books has always inspired a sense of quiet, Will thinks, it is one of the reasons he is so fond of them. The drawback of the lack of alcohol is that there are less excuses for the theme of conversation. Will tries not to curl his lip after overhearing several insinuations about the ladies Boyle, and even insinuations about himself, in his borrowed suit and cheap mask.

 

Hannibal stops beside the hearth, where a fire roars over the hum of conversation and drowns the worst of it from Will’s attention.

 

“A detail,” he opines thoughtfully, “Is it courage or foolishness that has the ladies Boyle holding a party such as this in a city… such as _this_?” Hannibal’s sweeping arm encompasses the bookshelves, the guests, the rats crawling through the grate in the corner.

 

“You disapprove?” Will asks, against his better judgement.

 

“Never of a party,” quips Hannibal.

 

“Then why can’t it be both? They aren’t necessarily independent.”

 

“A point,” Hannibal concedes, with a short bow. Will is immediately swept by the image of an actor on stage, when plays were still performed in Dunwall before the great Plague and the great Flood, before people were afraid to step outside their own front doors, let alone into large, cramped spaces with hundreds of other audience members and the squeaking horde of rats beneath their feet. Hannibal would be a soloist, of course, a lead performer. If Will follows the directions of that little voice in his head and sinks just a little deeper behind the blackness of that mask, he imagines a stage lit by lights, and a blood red suit, and thunderous applause.

 

“But on the topic of foolish courage,” Hannibal presses on, “our unexpected guest.”

 

“That could be me,” Will demurs, “I’m Beverley’s plus one – hardly a prestigious invite.”  


“And Ms. Katz herself is here with the intent of procuring information from the mistress of Hiram Burrows.”

 

“How astute.”

 

“But not the guest of which we speak.”

 

There is a pause. Will is assessing and is being, in turn, assessed. He knows this with the sense of instinct that comes from restless nights and a pain in his hand. In the firelight, Hannibal’s mask is more horrifying than genteel. Even the creations of the guests around them – tortured whales, ship masks and bones – seem to shy away in contrast.

 

“The masked vagrant,” Will says.

 

“We are all of us masked.” Hannibal points out.

 

“But none of us the former Lord Protector.”

 

The fire spits embers at them, shockingly loud in the sudden silence.

 

“That could be construed as a leap of judgement.” Hannibal admits after a time, although he sounds amused, and more than a little intrigued.

 

“Not really,” Will mutters, “I think I saw him sign the guestbook five minutes ago.”

 

There is a commotion from the room they exited. The drunken musician is being escorted forcefully away from the piano forte, while his companions alternate between protests and hysterical laughter. In the chaos, a rat scrambles across the abandoned keys, swollen belly banging loud against the black and white ivory.

 

Of course, the room is several walls away from Will and Hannibal now, but Will can see the events unfurl with sheer clarity. All he has to do is _try._

“Ah,” Hannibal rumbles, “foolish courage, indeed. And how do you sign, Mister Graham. As Ms Katz's plus one? Occupation, unemployed?”

 

Will is caught flat footed. He realises he’s been staring at the far wall (through the far wall), although Hannibal could not have known that behind his mask. Or could he? There is a cloying tone to his words, as if he is verbally attempting to pull Will’s attention back to him. Hannibal is a creature that does not do well without attention, Will thinks, perhaps unkindly. Or is it just Will’s attention he cannot do without?  


Ah. Perhaps pushing a bit too far, there.

 

“I need another drink,” Will says, flustered, and Hannibal is gesturing towards a passing waitress with all the grace of an orchestra conductor. She hesitates beside them for as long as it takes Hannibal to swipe a glass off her tray, her nervous eyes wet and flickering to the corners of the room.

 

“Blood on her heels,” Will mutters, eyes on her shoes. She hurries off without a word. The glasses on her tray rattle with every shake of her hands.

 

When Will looks up, Hannibal is watching him. Will is not sure he ever really stopped.

 

“Do you dream, Mister Graham?” he asks.

 

“No,” Will replies sarcastically, “I’m a fish.”

 

“Now, now,” Hannibal chides, “no need to be rude. And we were getting along so famously.”  


The laughing party have moved from the instrument room to the foyer, where they are now waltzing along with the orchestra in stumbling waves, giddy on alcohol and the hysteria that comes with surviving on the brink of extinction. Like climbing up a stairwell as it crumbles beneath them, Will muses. Will has been on one or two of such staircases in his time.

 

“Shall we return to more congenial topics?” His companion asks. “Now, where were we? A masked vagrant, the Lord Protector, and a party.”

 

“Sounds like a Friday night,” Will muses, and sticks his nose in his glass, inhaling deeply. If he drowns himself in fumes enough he may just escape the voices, the second instinct, and the urge to look into a person’s mind and then keep _looking_.

 

Of course, that would suit _him_ just fine. But Will was never much known for being accommodating.

 

“Well, the night is still young.” Hannibal concedes, with another aristocratic dip of his head. Any further and he’s likely to gore Will. And yet, Will does not step back. Instead, the low rumble of Hannibal’s voice lures him closer. He is reminded of some of Sokolov’s paintings, not his portraits, but the explorations of the deep sea, where fish with teeth like knives hang bulbous lights in the deep to lure in prey. Sokolov paints them like orbs of white in the pitch black of canvas, his less popular creations, hung in dark corners of the public gallery where they won’t cause offence. Will sometimes stands in front of them and stares for a time, while flooded pipes drip in the background and the City Watch yell curses in the street at rats, at weepers, at the state of the world.

 

“William,” Hannibal murmurs, “you are staring at my hand.”

 

Will flinches, and takes a short step back.

 

“And how are you enjoying the party, Count Lecter?” He retorts, eager to shift the balance of a conversation he may already have lost power of.

 

“Not at all, and also extremely.” Hannibal responds peacefully enough, although his tone of wry. “In that I do not enjoy it for the reasons the ladies Boyle hope I do, and that I _do_ enjoy all the things they do not.”

 

“Oh, Lord,” Will realises with growing horror, “you’re a writer.”

 

“Not remotely, I prefer the brush.”

 

“That’s really not my point.”

 

“I enjoy parties,” Hannibal concedes, “I am not enjoying this one.”

 

“Dare I ask why?” Will snorts. “And remember: I only have half a glass of port left.”

 

“How do I limit the list? The building is magnificence itself, the contents not so. The guests are desperate in their attempts of normalcy, the conversation boorish. The musicians are the only ones in the city left alive and therefore, not nearly of the calibre I prefer.”

 

“So what you’re saying,” Will says, “is that you don’t have an opinion either way.”

 

Hannibal pauses. Will thinks he’s smiling. Will _hopes_ he’s smiling.

 

…He’s not yet sure why that is.

 

“The food,” Hannibal announces magnanimously, “is atrocious.”

 

“Well,” Will mutters, “I don’t know about that. These biscuits are pretty good.”

 

“I hadn’t the heart to try, after a glimpse inside that monstrosity they’re calling a shark.”

 

“Can you even eat, with that mask?” It encompasses Hannibal’s entire face, covering his hair, jaw, and neck. There’s a small clip in the side for ease of removal, but Will would not have lasted ten minutes before falling into a claustrophobic panic and tearing the thing off.

 

“I assure you, William. I am quite full. And masks were a suggested ensemble, not required.” Hannibal points out.

 

“All the better to disguise the plague with,” Will argues reluctantly. A nearby guest looks sharply in their direction, before muttering their excuses and wandering off. Lord Brisby is in the corner downing his third sherry and wringing his hands. He’s checking the door every two minutes. Details, details, details…

 

“But there are things that I enjoy,” Hannibal says, breaking Will out of his observations.

 

“Wait,” Will drowns the rest of his glass, shaking his head with a cough. His mask is slightly askew, and he adjusts it to push curls out of his face. The slits in his mask do nothing to help his vision, but then, it’s not like solid objects can really stop him from seeing what he wants to see, these days. In any case – Hannibal stiffens. “Okay, go on.”

 

“The company, for one.”

 

“Pull the other one,” Will snorts.

 

“Sincerely, I find myself relieved,” Hannibal opens his arms, the red of his coat glimmering like liquid in the firelight. “You were a pleasant surprise, William. I thought the night would be dull drudgery, before you came along.”

 

“I didn’t come anywhere,” Will retorts automatically.

 

Hannibal pauses.

 

A blooming heat rises to Will’s cheeks.

 

“I,” he decides, “have had too much to drink.”

 

“Perhaps,” Hannibal concedes, “I’d offer you some water, but these days that’s likely to do more harm than good.”

 

“Is that what you want to do?” William finds himself asking sharply. “Good?”

 

Hannibal tilts his head. The implacable nothingness of his masks expression betrays nothing, and yet, Will senses somehow that if he were to remove it, the face underneath would be exactly the same.

 

“ _Primum non noncore_ ,” Hannibal bows shortly, “a sincere oath.”

 

Suddenly all the blood that has rushed to Will’s face seems to drain away.

 

“Oh,” he says hollowly, “a doctor, then.”

 

“You take offense?”

 

Will goes to sip his drink, before realising his glass is empty. His grip whitens on the expensive glass – not as expensive as it once was, and yet –

 

“Doctors.” He says shortly. “Are not my favourite people.”

 

“Ah.” Hannibal hesitates, before reaching out and prying the crystal cup from Will’s hand. He sets it on the mantelpiece with uncommon gentleness. “Should I ask about your dreams again? Or is that too trite?”

 

“My demons are a little more advanced than the local dentist, Count Lecter,” says Will waspishly. Any and all warmth from the conversation has fled. He is left feeling ill at-ease and rude, for the sake of being rude.

 

“Far be it for me to be one of them,” Hannibal murmurs, “shall I humanise myself for your benefit?”

 

“Do what you like.” Will suddenly decides, “I think I’ll go find Bev.”

 

He goes to move away, when suddenly an iron grip is on his hand. It does not squeeze in a painful way, but is certainly secure, in a way that belies total confidence and ease. Hannibal has not moved a single inch. Suddenly the underlying anxiety that has haunted Will these past several months comes to the forefront of his mind, as loud to him as the wailing claxons of the City Watch, warning him of danger. His hand is burning, his body is humming, and Hannibal the doctor _has not moved a single inch._

“Dear William,” Hannibal murmurs, and there is more commotion outside the manor, the distant pops and whistles of fireworks and somewhere, Will knows, a woman is being laid to rest – forever, or in a boat, it is all the same to him – “Won’t you stay and talk, awhile?”

 

The guests are leaving the manor in droves, voices carolling awed cries to the heaven as they watch colours rain from the sky. Will is transfixed. His hand, marked for too many months now, burns like fire as Hannibal reaches up and removes Will’s mask.

 

“Did he send you?” Will demands nonsensically. His uncovered face is sweating from the heat of the fire and the closeness of the mask, he knows what he must look like – pallid, limp, with wet curls and fevered eyes. He is frozen in place by some invisible, iron-strong will. The guests are all gone, they are alone in the parlour. There are the ghost of footsteps on the floor above and next to a nearby bookshelf some rats feed on an upended platter of berries and cheese.

 

“The Outsider does not play favourites,” Hannibal replies, as easy as if they were discussing the weather (rain, rain, it is always rain…) “But he does enjoy throwing the dice.”

 

“That’s what you are, then, the dice?”

 

Hannibal pauses, before reaching up and with one smooth, practiced movement, he removes his mask, horns and all. The face beneath is somehow exactly what Will expected and yet not at all. Ashy hair and a furrowed brow. A lazy mouth and eyes that shine red underneath the sickly lamplight of the manor. When Hannibal removes his leather gloves, his Mark shines fresh beneath the firelight, as deep and red as a brand.

 

“Not at all, William. The Outsider gave you a gift. It is up to you what to do with it, as it is up to me what I do with mine.”

 

“And what,” Will hisses, “ _exactly,_ do you do with yours?”

 

Hannibal smiles, and casually throws Will’s mask into the fireplace. It crackles under the weight of the heat, and Will is suddenly self-conscious. Perhaps it is the way Hannibal is looking at him, with his back to the rest of the party, the manor, the guests, the fireworks, all of Dunwall drowning under its own folly.

 

“I throw parties,” Hannibal confides, and his eyes are very, very red.

 

“But I assure you, William, the food is _much_ better.”

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> hahaha what the fuck is this
> 
> idk blame kesskay


End file.
